Migration trauma and psychiatry in the early twentieth century

The article analyses, through the use of primary sources, the relationship between emigration and madness during the Italian transatlantic migration at the beginning of the twentieth century. During that years, mental illness started to spread among returning emigrants, while the countries of destination showed their disfavour towards new emigration, especially the one coming from the South of Italy. At that time, most of the Italian psychiatric community was influenced by the positivist and Lombrosian approach which considered mental alienation as an organic disease widespread among southern populations. The southern emigrant has been transformed into a person subjected to madness and the act of emigrating has been conceived as a symptom instead of a necessity. Lastly, the research focuses on ‘abandonment issues’ suffered by emigrants’ wives. These psychic pathologies, neglected by the psychiatry at that time, would have represented an opportunity for a better understanding of the migration trauma.